O.M. Then it came from _outside_. Adam is quite big enough; let us not try to make a god of him. _None but gods have ever had a thought which did not come from the outside_. Adam probably had a good head, but it was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up _from the outside_. He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil—he had to get the idea _from the outside_. Neither he nor Eve was able to originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the apple _from the outside_. A man’s brain is so constructed that _it can originate nothing whatsoever_. It can only use material obtained _outside_. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power. _It has no command over itself, its owner has no command over it_. Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare’s creations— O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare’s _imitations_. Shakespeare created nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly portrayed people whom _God_ had created; but he created none himself. Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could not create. _He was a machine, and machines do not create_. Y.M. Where _was_ his excellence, then? O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him _from the outside_; outside influences, suggestions, _experiences_ (reading, seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and _it automatically_ turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no _outside material_ to work with, and could have invented none; and _no outside influences_, teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would have produced something—something up to the highest limit of Turkish influences, associations, and training. In France he would have produced something better—something up to the highest limit of the French influences and training. In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the _outside helps afforded by that land’s ideals, influences, and training_. You and I are but sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out Gobelins. Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause and praise. It is an infamous doctrine. O.M. It isn’t a doctrine, it is merely a fact.